Louis Denis Jules Gavarret

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Louis Denis Jules Gavarret (1809-1890} was a French physician who was born in Astaffort, a town in the canton of Lot-et-Garonne. He graduated from l'Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

Gavarret is remembered for the systemization and expansion of Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis' (1787-1872) statistical methodology in regards to medicine. Pierre Louis' contention was to make medicine an exact science in diagnosis of a medical condition, and also to refute the "inductive approach" that was prevalent at the time. Gavarret was a major catalyst regarding the statistical method. He emphasized that this process would only work under certain conditions, such as; the medical cases must be comparable, and there has to exist enough examples to reach an exact conclusion. Lavarett's precision or "confidence rate" was calculated to be 99.5% or a ratio of 212:1. In essence, the two doctors believed that through knowledge of the aggregate patient data, the disease and treatment would be understood.

In 1840, Gavarret and Gabriel Andral (1797-1876) were the first to show that blood composition varied depending on the pathological condition of the subject, and their research demonstrated the value of animal chemistry as a means of confirming diagnoses.

Bibliography:

Andral G, Gavarret J. Sur les modifications de properties de quelques principes du sang (fibrine, globules, materiaux solides du sérum, et eau) dans les maladies. Ann Chim 1840
Recherches sur la quantité d’acide carbonique exhalé par le poumon dans l’espèce humaine. Written with G. Andral 30 pages., 1 pl. Paris, Masson & cie., 1843. [Ext. Annales de chimie et de physique.
Principes généraux de statistique médicale, Béchet Jne et Labé, L. Gavarret, Paris, 1840.